Here is another story, The Merchant and his Clever Parrot, from Rumi‘s Masnavi.
There was a certain merchant who kept a parrot in a cage.
Being about to travel to Hindustan on business, he asked the parrot if he had any message to send to his kinsmen in that country, and the parrot desired him to tell them that he was kept confined in a cage.
The merchant promised to deliver this message, and on reaching Hindustan, duly delivered it to the first flock of parrots he saw. On hearing it one of them at once fell down dead.
The merchant was annoyed with his own parrot for having sent such a fatal message, and on his return home sharply rebuked his parrot for doing so. But the parrot no sooner heard the merchant’s tale than he too fell down dead in its cage.
The merchant, after lamenting his death, took his corpse out of the cage and threw it away.
To his surprise, the parrot immediately recovered life, and flew away, explaining that the Hindustani parrot had only feigned death to suggest this way of escaping from confinement in a cage.
The analogy of this story is similar to the plight of our soul. We must ‘die’ in order to truly ‘live’.